Interview with Glen Mazzara

It’s an AMC program decision so that the show, which
is broadcast in the States on Sunday night, is not competing with NFL, the play
offs or the Superbowl. So we go off just before the holidays and then return
the week after the Superbowl.

Do you keep that in mind when you’re writing The Walking Dead?

Yes, we develop the show for 16 and we build to that
break. This year we did a bit of a cliffhanger, I would not do that type of
cliffhanger at the end of the season because it’s one thing to do a cliffhanger
for two months and it’s another thing to do a cliffhanger for eight months,
that’s sort of cruel. But we do keep that in mind when we’re breaking the
season.

What did you enjoy the most working with The Walking Dead?

Telling a big kickass story on a grand scale, with
great characters, kind of new territory and I also really enjoyed the fans,
something that I had never experienced, particularly on this level. That’s
really been incredibly rewarding.

Is working for TWD similar to working in other TV shows?

No, The Walking Dead has something very unique about
it that I’ve never experienced and I don’t see occurring in other TV shows. But
everyone who works on The Walking Dead or who watches it thinks they are right
and everyone thinks they know exactly what the writer should be writing. Every
fan, every actor, every writer, every producer feels that their vision of The Walking
Dead is right. I’ve never seen a show in which everyone involved in this
experience has such a level of ownership. It’s really been very very
interesting.

What is the role of a showrunner?

A showrunner is more than just a head writer, they
are setting the tone, they are setting the vision of the show, they’re working
with every single aspect of the show from the actors to the directors to the
wardrobe to make up to set design to editors, special effects and music. They
are involved with every single aspect of the show. It’s really their voice that
the audience hears every week.

Did you choose the Tom Waits track at the end of episode 11?

I did, I’ll tell you how I got to it, I was
listening to it when I was writing that scene and I even tweeted about it. I
think I wrote “Tom Waits is great to write to”. I was writing that scene and I
got into that scene and I just wanted that particular scene to feel like that
family had been healed; they were fighting at the beginning of that season... And
now the family is healed, there would be no TV, but people would sing and we’ve
seen them sing around the campfire, so
I thought what’s the song? I was listening to that song, and I wrote it into
the script and I had never seen a show that had started with one character
singing a song a capella, and for it to go into the actual song and to play
over a montage. I had never seen that in film or TV. So it was a creative
chance and risk. So fortunately we got Tom to give us the rights, and if you think
about it with the scene of the naked woman standing over a guy holding a knife
to his throat, Tom Waits is the perfect choice. That worked out, I am a huge
Tom Waits fan since I was 19 or 20 and I actually waited backstage at a show to
shake his hand and have been a fan for decades. Beth is a professional singer
and I knew that, I don’t think I had heard her sing live and I wrote the scene
at which she sings at the campfire, and then I called her and said “can you
sing this” and she said “sure, no problem”. I then called Lauren and asked if
she can sing too, and the idea for that was that they were singing for their
father when they’re finally safe. You get the sense that it’s the first time
they’ve been happy, since we’ve ever seen them and it just kind of made sense.
But when I wrote that into the script, that was a risk and there were a lot of
people involved in the show who weren’t sure it was going to work but I had
faith that that would work and it could’ve been schmaltzy but I felt that
Ernest could’ve directed it in such a way that it wasn’t. He’s done a lot of
work on Treme and has had a lot of experience filming live music and I knew
that the two actresses could handle singing live and it worked. It was a
seminal moment for this year.

Which is your favourite scene on TWD so far?

That is tough. I think my favourite scene on the
show so far is when Rick returns a gun to Carl in the hayloft of the barn in
episode twelve and he talks about his own father and says “I wish I had more
advice for you, my dad was good like that”. H wants to be a great father and
he’s not a great father and his son accepts the gun. That gun will play in
Shane’s death, it plays in Lori’s death; we flash back to that scene. It’s a
very important scene, very sparsely written, it’s beautifully shot..

What scene was the most fun to make?

There are a couple of different ones that were fun
to make. The Governor’s attack on the prison was really a lot of fun to edit and
to put together. That scene I absolutely loved. I think one of my favourite
scenes is a scene that a lot of people forget about, in episode two of this
season, where the prisoners give the prison beat down to the zombies and they end
up shiving the zombies and stomping them. I just think that that is so funny. I
wrote that scene and people were thinking that we don’t do that level of comedy
and it’s just so unexpected and yet makes so much sense in the world that it is
actually fun.

Did you work with a zombie related show previously?

I wrote a horror movie before for Guillermo del Torro called Hater that was not
officially a zombie movie, it was more of a rage virus type movie and reducing
people into homicidal maniacs and so that was the only time. I did play a
zombie when I was fourteen in my friend’s home movie, in a sort of a Super 8 type scenario, where I chase a girl
in the woods and then vomited oatmeal all over myself.

What would you like to do after this?

I would like to create my own show and work on my
own material and certainly work on shows that I am a part of from the ground
floor. I’ve now done a few shows where I’ve gone in to execute somebody else’s
vision of the show or to assist other people. I’d like to take all of the experience
that I have now and set the table myself and cook the entire meal and just do a
show completely from scratch to finish and have it be representative of who I
am as an artist.

Were you a comic book fan before working on the show?

No, I wasn’t aware of it until I started working on
season two and I read it all in a couple of days. I’m a comic book fan so I
enjoyed reading it and think Robert has done a lot of great stuff in it so I
became a fan after working on the show.

What makes The Walking Dead so popular?

People buy into the characters. They get really
invested and they put themselves into that world and the decisions the
characters make. They see themselves alongside Daryl Dixon, his brother Merle, Rick
and the others. The audience plays along
at home, if you will.

Who was the hardest character to kill off? And tell us about the 'death dinners'

It’s premature to discuss that.

I
call all of the actors before the script is released and maybe there was one
minor character that I didn’t connect with, and they weren’t supposed to get a
copy of the script but for the most part I call.

I’m the one who is ordering the dinner so no I am
not invited. It’s always a purely creative decision and I am there to help the
actor through the process, because some actors don’t take the news well. Part
of my job as the showrunner is to help them, so that they can do their best
work at a time when they’re really emotionally destroyed and leaving a show
that they love. It’s challenging.

What are the main differences between the show and comic book?

The show has taken on a life of its own, so you
really need to decide what is honest, what will happen next, and it’s developed
its own path. It’s not that we make choices to reject anything from the comic
book, but we have to stay true to parameters of the story and the parameters of
our world.

How long does it take to complete an episode of The Walking Dead?

Months, we filmed those episodes in eight days,
before that we’re prepping it for seven days but from start to finish, probably
four to five months, from inception to final delivery.

Dale had been the morale compass of the group, and after his death Lori took that role. Is
it fair to say that Andrea has taken over that role?

Andrea certainly has a moral compass but she’s not
currently in the group. I think that the role of the compass in Rick’s group
has perhaps fallen to Hershel.

What about the format of the seasons, with the hiatus? As a writer,
do you think it’s a good or bad thing?

It’s a programming issue, we’re there to develop a
show for AMC and those are one of the parameters of the show. It’s no different
than the fact that we have less than 43 minutes and that we have particular ad
breaks, it’s just part of the format of the show. Writing TV is about
compression and being imaginative between boundaries. It’s just a given and you
work with it, I don’t think it’s good or bad, it just is.

Daryl’s character wasn’t in the original comic books. Are you surprised by the fan
reaction to him?

No, there’s something about Norman’s portrayal of
Daryl that makes that character very magnetic. In season two we were developing
certain episodes where Daryl withdrew because he had taken on this journey to
find Sophia and failed. He was withdrawing from the group to process this.
Around the same time we were screening the early episodes of the show in which
he was featured heavily and I realised that he just pops on screen, that he has
a lot of charisma, he’s cool, he’s funny, he has kept his sense of humour but
we were developing episodes that he wasn’t featured heavily. I missed him and
so I made a course adjustment in the last few episodes of the show of season
two to feature him heavily, for example in episode twelve, there’s a story line
in which he and Glenn
are tracking Randall. There were some concerns by people involved in the show
that it gave away the surprise that Shane was going to kill Rick. I wanted to
make sure that we had Daryl there in a big way. Daryl has some great lines and
some great moments in the finale of last year where somebody says “we are going
to die tonight” and he says “it’s as good a night as any”, he’s on his motor
cycle and saves Carol. I think as a writer I’ve learned to catch up to what
Norman brings to the show. He is a huge asset and I was never surprised. Coming
in as a new showrunner I had many things to deal with. I’ll admit I didn’t see
it until I did and then I made a course adjustment.

There’s a popular internet thing going “If Daryl Dies We Riot” around… Can any one character be bigger
than a show?

Probably. Sure, you can’t kill House, but the Daryl
character can do anything you need him to do, he could be a love interest, he
could be a hero, he could be an anti-hero if you needed him to be. He could do
anything you want, you could spin off Daryl and he could carry a show or
feature film by himself. Norman has that kind of heft to him as an actor and
it’s a fully developed character. What happens to that character, I don’t want
to say, but I’m certainly aware of how important Daryl is to The Walking Dead.

Daryl and Carol, is the romance inferred? Is it subtle?

I think Carol has romantic feelings for Daryl, I
think Daryl has a great amount of affection for Carol as a friend. I don’t know
if he has romantic feelings for her. I think she would love for them to be
together but she’s also afraid of pressing her case too much because his
friendship is more important than anything, she doesn’t want to risk alienating
him. What’s nice about their relationship is that they are two broken people
who have redefined themselves during this apocalypse and those characters have
really come together. If you think about it, Daryl had very little lines in the
beginning when we first met him, and Carol did not have a lot either last year.
We developed them and the actors are absolutely fantastic. One of my all-time
favourite scenes is where Carol sees the baby for the first time and smiles and
realises that means Lori’s gone and Melissa’s portrayal of that scene is
absolutely heartbreaking. She’s an incredible actress and just brings so much
to that role and her performance has made me cry more than anyone else in the
editing room. She absolutely breaks my heart. That Carol/Daryl dynamic has
become so important to the heart of the show that I hope the writers moving
ahead realise that.